Organizer: Center for Khmer Studies (CKS)
Type/Location: Virtual
Description:
Join the Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) for a talk by Haydon Cherry, CKS Senior Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam.
Abstract:
At the end of 1915 and the beginning of 1916, rural uprisings shook the French colonial administrations in Cambodia and Cochin China. In Cambodia, between November 1915 and the end of February 1916, tens of thousands of peasants descended upon the capital of the protectorate, Phnom Penh, and repeatedly petitioned King Sisowath for relief from their labour and tax obligations. In the countryside, the peasants attacked local officials, sacked buildings, looted markets, and raided Vietnamese and Chinese residents. The violence was particularly fierce in the south-eastern provinces of Takéo, Kandal, Prey Veng, and Svay Rieng. In January, the neighbouring colony of Cochin China began to experience unrest, with disorder and bloodshed breaking out in the Mekong delta provinces of Trà Vinh and Bến Tre; and in Biên Hòa, Thủ Dầu Một, Chợ Lớn, and Gia Định, closer to the capital, Sài Gòn. On February 15, more than three hundred people attacked the Central Prison in Sài Gòn to free Phan Xích Long (潘赤龍), the jailed leader of a failed uprising in 1913 and the self-proclaimed emperor of Annam. In both Cambodia and Cochin China, the French sent troops to suppress the uprisings, resulting in deaths, arrests, trials, and executions. This talk offers a new explanation for these uprisings, suggesting that popular millenarian beliefs shaped what was, in fact, a single event in a single space, which it calls the “Lower Mekong Marchland.”
About the Speaker:
Haydon Cherry is a historian of modern Southeast Asia and modern Vietnam in particular. Yale University Press published his first book, Down and Out in Saigon: Stories of the Poor in a Colonial City, in 2019. Omega Press published the Vietnamese translation, Chím Nổi ở Sài Gòn: Những cảnh đời bần cùng ở thành phố thuộc địa, in 2023. Cherry is currently writing a new book, The Year of the Horse,on the origins of the largest uprising before the Vietnamese August Revolution in 1930 and 1931 in the north-central provinces of Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh. He teaches at Vietnam National University.
Registration:
To attend the event virtually, please register here.